Wednesday, 30 December 2015

THREE SIMPLE STEPS TO DESTRUCTIONThe ongoing cancellation of
the IBRC Promissory Note bonds and subsequent destruction of the money raised
is a three-part process:

The
National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) issues sovereign bonds from which it
raises billions of euro – this becomes part of the national debt, interest paid
on the bonds from the date of sale, the principal to be repaid when those bonds
mature;

In increments
(so far) of €500m, the NTMA uses some of those billions to buy the IBRC Promissory
Note bonds held by the Central Bank of Ireland;

The Central
Bank of Ireland destroys the hundreds of millions received from the NTMA and
that portion of the €31bn Promissory Note debt is declared ‘cancelled’, thus
satisfying the ECB. This is the most critical of the three elements, in fact
the raison d'être for the entire exercise – Quantitative Squeezing is
what MEP Luke Ming Flanagan has titled it, the ECB-ordained destruction of the
entire €31bn used to bail out the failed creditors of two failed Irish banks,
Anglo Irish and INBS.

This week, March 2016,the Central Bank of
Ireland destroyed €500,000,000, half a billion euro, a sum it received from our National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) that had been borrowed on the financial markets; last year, 2015, in four similar tranches of €500m, our Central Bank similarly destroyed a total of €2bn; in 2014, it was €1bn - all of those billions given to them by our NTMA from funds it had raised from sovereign bond sales.

NONE of our national media reported the above; those that did, reported only that an IBRC bond had been 'cancelled', while some even suggested it was a 'good news' story, that we had gained on the whole deal! 'A profit of €180m handed over to the Exchequer!' it trumpeted, never bothering to question whence this 'profit' originated - it came from our NTMA, the ones from whom the Central Bank was getting all those hundreds of millions, all of which is borrowed.

THE PROMISSORY NOTES - PROMISE OF HELL TO PAY

The actual Promissory Note bonds areeasily explained and understood:

What happens to a house built
on dodgy foundations, a house missing many critical support pillars and beams? It collapses. So it was with the euro and so it is that now, 17 years after the currency was launched in 1999 and several years after that collapse, the EU is trying to salvage what's left, trying to install those structural pillars and beams (Single Supervisory Mechanism, Single Resolution Mechanism etc. etc.)
in a building that is still tottering on the brink.

When
the banking crisis hit Ireland there were still no suchstructures in place to deal
with troubled banks and as a direct result of that negligence, Ireland suffered a major hit.

The EU, however, the ECB in particular, DIDhave a policy –
no bank would be allowed fail. So in 2009/10 when Anglo and INBS were already
(to anyone with even half a brain) obviously insolvent, a fudge was concocted
between the Central Bank of Ireland, the Irish government and the ECB to save
those banks. This involved the issuance of Promissory Notes by the Irish government,
accepted as collateral by the Central Bank of Ireland/ECB, and funding
eventually amounting to €31bn was issued to the two insolvent banks from the
Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) fund.

Despite the fact that this was
done principally to save bigger banks across the eurozone, in Germany and
France particularly (Anglo and INBS were non-systemic to the Irish banking
system); despite the fact the ECB colluded in the circumventing of its own
rules on use of the ELA; despite the fact all involved knew that Anglo/INBS (later
combined to become IBRC) would never be able to repay those billions, the same ECB
now insists that Ireland must take that entire €31bn back out of circulation.

We don’t have it (we’re broke,
up to our necks in debt) so we borrow it, and tranche by €500m tranche our
Central Bank destroys it – the three-part system described above.

Is all this too complex to
understand? Why are not being told what’s happening? We in the Ballyhea Says No
understand, we know what’s happening, down to the last sordid detail.

We are determined that all in
Ireland should also know, that all our friends in Europe (and we have many)
should know.

And we are determined that
however long it takes, this wrong will be righted. Water under the bridge? The Central
Bank of Ireland still holds €25bn in Promissory Note bonds, awaiting sale, that money then destroyed. That’s a lot of water yet to flow…

Monday, 28 December 2015

On
December 21st, for the fourth time this year, the National Treasury
Management Agency (NTMA) announced the ‘cancellation’ of a €500m bond
which had been ‘issued in connection with the Irish Bank Resolution
Corporation (IRBC) Act 2013’.

As with three previous such €500m bond sales earlier this
year, as with two other such last year, the Irish Times carried a report
of the ‘cancellation’ and it sang with positivity, nothing but good
news for Ireland. Why, we even gained from the transaction – ‘It is
known,’ sang the Times, ‘That the Central Bank realised a €180.3 million
gain on the sale of €500 million of 2038 notes this day last year.’

Think about that for a moment – ‘realised a €180.3m gain’ on a €500m
transaction. How? Well you see that's a secret, the Irish Times doesn't elaborate.

Incredible? Yes, but for those of us who closely track these events, even that isn’t the major howler.

Bear in mind that the Irish Times claims to be ‘The Paper of Record’. Now, know this.

The most important element in all these NTMA IBRC bond ‘cancellations’,
in fact the whole raison d'être for those bonds in the first place, is
what happens to the money the NTMA gives to the Central Bank of Ireland
to buy out those bonds.

That money is destroyed.

That’s right, my friends – destroyed.

FOLLOW THE MONEY In a nutshell:
NTMA borrows billions on the finance markets through the issuance of
sovereign bonds; in tranches of €500m the NTMA then uses that borrowed money to buy the IBRC
bonds from the Central Bank of Ireland and thus ‘cancels’ those bonds –
that much IS reported by the Irish Times; what’s NOT reported, the
Central Bank of Ireland then destroys those borrowed billions. Every
cent.

Even as we headed into a festive season that sees record
numbers of people evicted, on the streets, below the poverty line,
record numbers fed by charity organisations, record numbers on waiting
lists in a health service that has all but fallen apart, this broke and
heavily indebted money is destroying borrowed money by the hundreds of
millions.

And even in its own reports of those incidents, the Irish Times omits to mention this, the most critical element of all.

Last year, the NTMA gave the Central Bank of Ireland €1,000m of
borrowed money, €1,000m on which we are now paying interest, €1,000m
which will have to repaid by a future generation of Irish people when
those bonds mature; this year, 2015, the NTMA gave the Central Bank of
Ireland €2,000m of borrowed money, €2,000m on which we are now paying
interest, €2,000m which will have to repaid by a future generation of
Irish people when those bonds mature.

And the Central Bank of Ireland immediately destroyed those hundreds of millions of euro, all three billion.

Those three billion are just the start – the Central Bank of Ireland
still holds €25bn of IBRC bonds for sale, that €25bn then also to be
destroyed.

A NOD AND A WINK, A €31bn DEBT The reason for all
this destruction of money? In 2009/10, to prevent the collapse of two
insolvent banks (Anglo Irish and INBS), the Central Bank of Ireland, the
Irish Government and the ECB colluded to bypass the ECB’s own
regulations and allowed the creation of €31bn to bail out the creditors
of the two banks; a couple of years ago
those banks were finally wound up and as was known even at the time,
didn’t have the wherewithal to cover that €31bn; the ECB now insists
that our Central Bank has to take that entire €31bn back out of
circulation. We don’t have it of course, so we borrow it and, tranche by
€500m tranche, destroy it.

The irony, as we head into 2016 – if
this were to happen now, under the new ECB banking ‘Single Resolution
Mechanism’, those two banks would be bailed out using funds raised from
the banks themselves. All too late for Ireland of course; those
structures SHOULD have been in place from the launch of the euro, but
weren’t.

That the government would much prefer you didn’t know
any of this is understandable, for obvious reasons; that the Irish
Times, that ALL our major national media, would so misrepresent it, is
an utter disgrace.

They would also have you all believe that the bank-debt ship has sailed, all water under the bridge.

BALLYHEA SAYS ‘KNOW’
In the Ballyhea Says No campaign, we know otherwise. For 252 weeks,
every week since March 6th 2011, we’ve been trying to get our message
across, the real story as outlined above. We don’t have the audience of
The Irish Times; you can help us. Copy this, share it, tweet it; let
people know.

This coming Sunday, January 3rd 2016, 10.30am in Charleville, we
march again; the first Sunday of another year, another milestone on a
journey that will end only with bank debt write-down. Join us.

Tuesday, 15 December 2015

Last Sunday we marked week 250
of the Ballyhea Says No campaign against the imposition of odious bank-debt on
the Irish people. In the days before and after I was asked many times – how
have ye kept going? How do ye persevere with a cause that gets so little
publicity? My answer, and it’s rhetorical, not a question – having learned what
we’ve learned over the last 250 weeks, knowing what we now know, how can we
not.

And God, what we’ve learned.

THE ECB COMFORT-BLANKET

The message broadcast is that
this is a home-grown problem (our Taoiseach leading that particular chorus),
that it all began with the Blanket Bank Guarantee of September 2008.

We know it did not.

We know it began with the
launch of the euro, a currency union which even the European Commission and the
ECB admit lacked many of the most crucial structural elements, elements they
are now trying to install, pillars such as the Single Resolution Mechanism (for
troubled banks), central bank deposit guarantee scheme, full Economic Monetary
Union/Banking Union/Fiscal Union;

We know that the catastrophes
that befell the eurozone subsequent to the launch of that flawed euro (five
near-bankruptcies, record debt/GDP levels in most other euro area countries)
were foreseen, predicted as far back as 1998 by renowned economists such as
Paul De Grauwe of the London School of Economics;

We know this crisis was NOT
home-grown, it was an EU-created problem in which yes, we have a share, but
ONLYa share.

We read that the ECB were
livid with Brian Lenihan and the then Irish government for offering that
blanket bank guarantee.

We know this to be nonsense.

We know that when the then
government and the government that succeeded them tried to burn senior
unguaranteed unsecured bondholders, they were told in no uncertain terms by the
ECB heavyweights – try it and see what happens;

We know that in 2008 the ECB
had no structures in place to deal with bank failure but they had a policy – no
bank will be allowed fail, no burden-sharing will be allowed. In effect, the ECB’s
own policy was also a blanket bank guarantee.

BAILOUT YES, BUT FOR WHO?

It has now become accepted
fact that in November 2010 Ireland got a bailout from the Troika.

We know the truth.

We know Ireland got loans of
€67.5bn from the Troika (€22.5bn each from the IMF and two EU funds), loans on
which the Troika were making big profits (charging Ireland a few percentage
points above what they themselves were borrowing for), loans that didn’t even
cover our full bank bailout cost of €69.7bn;

We know also via a
Bloomberg/Bank of International Settlements report that in 2007/08, German and
French big banks were exposed to Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland to
the tune of nearly $800bn, that if even the relatively small Irish banks
defaulted it could start a process that would end with the fall of the banking
system even in Germany and France;

We know that now, in 2015,
well over 90% of that exposure has been transferred from those big German and
French banks to the shoulders of the sovereign in Ireland, Portugal, Spain,
Italy and Greece.

Yes, we know who did the
bailing out, we know who got bailed out, and it wasn’t us.

PROMISSORY SOUR NOTE

The Irish people are told over
and over that Michael Noonan did a fantastic deal for Ireland on the Promissory
Note debt, that he saved us tens of billions.

We know different.

We know that under the old
schedule Michael and his government were under enormous pressure to come up
with €3.1bn every March, billions the Central Bank of Ireland would then
destroy, legacy of the bailout of the failed creditors of two failed banks,
Anglo and INBS; we know the destruction of the first €3.1bn sneaked in under
the radar in March 2011, the election just over;

We know the pressure Michael
came under in March 2012, the publicity being generated by the proposed
destruction of another €3.1bn, the stunt he pulled to get around that, one debt
swapped for another;

We know that what Michael
Noonan and this government then did, in February 2013, was betrayal on a scale
not seen before in the short history of this state; rather than challenge the
ECB on what even he himself admitted on national radio was ‘totally’ illegal
debt, to ease the pressure of having to find that €3.1bn every March, and the
attendant negative publicity, he borrowed the entire remaining €25bn and
created a new schedule of destruction, a schedule that lifted the burden from
this government’s shoulders and transferred it to future generations, the final
payment due to take place in 2053;

We know that 100 years after
the generation of 1916 sacrificed life and liberty to win freedom and
independence, the legacy of this government is decades of debt-slavery to the
EU, our freedom and independence surrendered without even an argument, never
mind a fight.

TIGHTEN THOSE BELTS

We’re told that we must live
within our means.

We know that under this new
debt regime, we will be living well BELOW our means for many decades.

We know we paid around €9bn in
national debt interest last year;

We know also that around
€2.5bn of that is bank-debt-related. Given the record low interest rates
prevailing at the moment, we know this will only get worse.

When the Central Bank
destroyed two tranches of €500m each last year, three more this year, a total
of €2.5bn received from the sale of Promissory Note bonds, our national media
was silent, no comment.

But we know.

We also know the Central Bank
of Ireland is holding a further €25.5bn of Promissory Note bonds to be sold (includes the balance from the 2012 bond),
the billions thus raised also destroyed but all those billions eventually to be
repaid, along with the interest accrued.

WHEN DOES A WRONG BECOME
ALRIGHT?

We’re told that nothing can
now be done about any of this, that it’s all too late, water under the bridge,
and sure aren’t we out of the woods now, unemployment falling, everything
hunky-dory and this government proven right.

Again, we know the truth.

We know how the unemployment
numbers are massaged and manipulated, that the true figure is nearer 20% than
10%, that if it wasn’t for the traditional safety valve of emigration, Ireland
would now be destitute;

We know how we’ve gained from
the collapse in value of the euro against the British pound the US dollar, two
jurisdictions to which we are major exporters;

We know that interest rates
are at a record low and have been for a record period, which has helped
enormously to keep our payments down;

We know how our recovery is
exaggerated by the dark dealings in the IFSC and by the tax-avoiding antics of
the multi-nationals.

Over the last several years we
too have been adversely affected by all that’s gone on, we too have lost loved
ones to emigration, to suicide; we want desperately to see a recovery, a real
recovery. But we know, what was done to us from 2008 to 2011, the transfer of
all that bank debt, was wrong and that wrong has never been righted; we know that
much of the pain that has been inflicted on us is directly related to that
odious debt. And we know, lift that burden and Ireland will soar.

Knowing all this, how can we
stop?

This is a fight that MUST be
won, a fight that will be won. How? Stop the sale of those P Note bonds immediately and the subsequent destruction of billions, challenge in the European Court of Justice the legality of the entire arrangement.In the meantime, our first challenge is to shine a light on what
has happened, to let people know. When that’s done, when YOU all know what we
know, we’re certain – you will be with us on this campaign.